East Coast ‘San Clemente’ gave English Catholics a foothold in America

Share this:

A road running across St. Mary's Peninsula leads to the village of Clements, gateway to the historic 1634 first landing site, St. Clement's Island. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Visitors walk the site of Historic St. Mary's City, first capital of Maryland and the place where Catholic settlers established a foothold after landing in 1634 on historic St. Clement's Island. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Sound

The gallery will resume inseconds

In the St. Clement's Island Museum, visitors can view models of the Ark and the Dove, which brought Catholic settlers to St. Clement's Island on the Potomac in 1634. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A sign along the trail on St. Clement's Island describes efforts to reforest the island to make it look at it did in 1634 when English settlers arrived. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Osprey nests can be found near docks at St. Clement's Island and Historic St. Mary's City. The birds stare right back at you. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

In the Maryland village of Clements, a sign leads visitors to St. Clement's Island and its history museum. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A historical marker stands outside St. Clement's Island Museum with the Potomac River and St. Clement's Island in the distance. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Directly across the Potomac River from St. Clement's Island is the Virginia birthplace of George Washington. You can visit a re-creation of the farm where he was born in 1732, 98 years after Catholic settlers had landed on St. Clement's Island, Md. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

College students visiting the St. Clement's Island Museum try on some period costume for a photo. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The photographer is reflected in the glass, picturing a St. Clement's Island Museum exhibit depicting a native hut. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

"Maryland Begins Here," says the St. Clement's Island Museum banner. Fall colors can be brilliant in late October but you need to go on a summer weekend to catch the museum's shuttle boat to the island. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

This image from a video at St. Clement's Island Museum tells how steamboats transported 19th Century tourists from Washington, D.C., to St. Clement's Island, then a resort known as Blackistone Island for its longtime owners. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The settlers who initially landed on St. Clement's Island in 1634 ultimately built their Catholic Church in St. Mary's City on the mainland. Today, the site of the original church has been identified and a replica erected. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

This is how the locals might have lived in huts in 1634 when English settlers arrived on the Potomac River, first landing on St. Clement's Island, later settling in St. Mary's City. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A visitor to St. Clement's Island Museum photographs depictions of Catholic settlers' first experiences on St. Clement's Island in 1634. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The St. Clement's Island Museum boat shuttles visitors to and from the island, visible in the rear, on summer weekends. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Visitors can climb this replica of historic Blackistone Lighthouse on St. Clement's Island, Md. on summer weekends to view historic photos and learn from docents. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

There's almost no surf at the St. Clement's Island version of California's San Clemente Pier. Boats dock there and also at a much larger pier on the other side of the island. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Visitors explore the grounds of the St. Clement's Island Museum, operated by St. Mary's County, Md. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Much of St. Clement's Island, Md., is ringed by rock revetment to prevent further erosion. The island is a fraction of the size Father Andrew White and his flock experienced in 1634. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A St. Clement's Island Museum exhibit depicts English colonists negotiating with the locals while seeking to build the Catholics' first settlement in English-speaking North America. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A museum map at Historic St. Mary's City puts into perspective the first well established European settlements in North America. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The Maryland Dove, at left, is a best-guess replica of the smaller of two ships that brought English settlers to America in 1634 to start a Catholic colony. (Photo by Fred Swegles, Orange County Register/SCNG)

This story is part of an occasional series profiling other places named San Clemente around the world.

Most Californians are vaguely aware of San Clemente Island, a barren offshore military base that you aren’t allowed to visit. It’s about 60 miles off San Clemente. It got its name in 1602 from Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino.

Across the country, Maryland has the English equivalent, St. Clement’s Island, even more steeped in history. Maryland school children make classroom pilgrimages to visit a St. Clement’s Island Museum and learn their heritage.

About the two islands’ shared name: Vizcaino named San Clemente Island, the southernmost of California’s channel islands, for the feast day of Saint Clement, Nov. 23 on the Catholic calendar.

Setting out from San Diego to map the coast of Alta California, he spotted the second island in the chain on Nov. 24, 1602, the eve of St. Catherine’s day. His diary says he landed there, naming it Santa Catalina.

Vizcaino likely passed the first island, San Clemente, on Nov. 23. It never achieved the allure of Catalina Island, today a tourist attraction.

In 1634, three decades after Vizcaino’s land-ho, a 400-acre patch of land on the Potomac River would assume an iconic role in Maryland history. Today, tourists and students are drawn to the historical museum at Coltons Point, Md.

“Maryland begins here,” a sign proclaims.

The wooded island is a half-mile out into the Potomac from the museum, some 65 miles downstream from Washington, D.C.

On summer weekends, the museum’s boat shuttles visitors to the isle. It’s a state park. You can hike, picnic, climb a replica lighthouse, birdwatch. Close your eyes, and imagine it is 1634.

* * *

That’s when Catholics arrived to start a colony, having departed from England’s Isle of Wight on Nov. 23, 1633 in two ships, the 400-ton Ark and the 50-ton Dove. The seafarers, thankful for surviving a frightful winter voyage, stepped ashore on the Potomac island, naming it St. Clement’s probably for the Nov. 23 date they left England. The name could also be a thanks for safe passage. St. Clement is patron saint of mariners.

By coincidence, the newcomers named the next Potomac island over St. Catherine’s – that would be Santa Catalina in Spanish.

* * *

On St. Clement’s Island, Father Andrew White said the first Catholic mass in English North America on March 25, now celebrated as Maryland Day. The museum describes how 150 or so settlers were a mix of Catholics, indentured servants and others seeking a fresh start.

The settlers had sailed up Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic seeking a safe place to land. Unsure how the natives would receive them, the colonists chose a defensible island. Since 1634, nearly four centuries of storms have eaten away at the island, leaving it barely one-tenth the size the Catholic arrivals saw.

* * *

California’s San Clemente Island is a 37,000-acre Navy base, 21 miles long, visible on the horizon from San Clemente, a beach town made famous in 1969 when President Richard M. Nixon bought a home at the south end of town.

Ole Hanson, a land developer who founded San Clemente in 1925, is said to have named his town for the island offshore. The stately house that would become President Nixon’s Western White House was built in 1926 for Hamilton Cotton, Hanson’s financial partner. A coastal headland there is known as Cotton’s Point.

If that sounds like Coltons Point, Md., gateway to St. Clement’s Island, there the similarity ends. You can’t cruise to San Clemente Island from Cotton’s Point – or from anywhere – unless you are military. The Pacific island, used by the Navy for decades as a shelling target, is off-limits.

* * *

At St. Clement’s Island Museum you can learn how George Calvert, a nobleman knighted in England as “Lord Baltimore,” petitioned King Charles to let him start a Catholic colony in America.

A century earlier, England was Roman Catholic. King Henry VIII wanted to divorce his wife. The Pope said no. Henry, who had other grievances with Rome, dissolved Catholic monasteries and set himself up as head of the Church of England, which became the official church.

By 1632, a rigid religious climate in England had led some to seek religious freedom elsewhere. Most famous, in 1620, were pilgrims to America on the Mayflower.

King Charles, who had married a French Catholic, was tolerant of Catholics but Parliament was not, passing laws that discriminated against Catholics, the St. Clement’s Island Museum said. Charles granted Calvert his Catholic colony. It was to be tolerant of the king’s church and of other Christian faiths. And it was to be named for the king’s wife: Terrae Maria, Mary’s Land.

* * *

Calvert died before the 1633 departure. His son Leonard stepped ashore at St. Clement’s Island to become Maryland’s first governor. Choosing a site downriver on the mainland for the capital, he negotiated land rights with the locals. They welcomed the newcomers for their fearsome fire sticks, handy defense against threats from other tribes.

The result was St. Mary’s City. The Yaocomaco tribe let the English occupy indigenous huts for starters, taught them to grow corn. The English traded hatchets, axes, hoes and cloth.

The colonists recognized the locals as a separate people with inherent rights – extraordinary for the time, the museum said.

* * *

Today Historic St. Mary’s City is a tourist draw. Role players in period attire tell visitors how Maryland began. The original state house and church are recreated. On a replica 17th Century ship, costumed crew describe seafaring.

You learn that in 1649, St. Mary’s City enacted the colonies’ first law decreeing freedom of religion. That year, across the Atlantic, King Charles was beheaded in the English Civil War. Meanwhile, Catholics lived on in Mary’s Land as a religious minority.

* * *

During the Revolutionary War, British troops invaded St. Clement’s Island, again during the War of 1812. Civil WarConfederate troops raided the island.

“During the 1880s, streets, cottages, an inn and a beer garden appeared on the island, as its owner transformed it into a popular resort,” a display states. Steamboats would arrive from Washington, D.C. There was a failed residential development, a period of neglect, a 20th Century revival.

In 1934, to mark the 300th anniversary of the first landing, county residents erected a 40-foot cross on the island, “recognizing the site as the location where religious toleration in America had its foundation.” Today the big white cross is a tourist favorite for selfies.

In St. Mary’s City, history buffs marked the 1934 anniversary with a pageant. That set in motion a campaign to recover artifacts, rediscover and recreate vestiges of the old city. Excavations continue today.

* * *

From 1919 to 1962, the U.S. government administered the island. After World War I, a Navy base about 15 miles across the Potomac in Virginia used the island as a target to test long-range artillery.

After the feds turned the isle over to the state, St. Mary’s County rallied public support to make St. Clement’s Island a visitor attraction with a rekindled history. The state encircled much of the island with rock to halt erosion. Volunteers reforested the island to resemble what the 1634 settlers saw.

In 2008, the St. Clement’s Hundred, a nonprofit, built a replica of the island’s historic lighthouse erected in 1851. The original was shut down in 1932 and destroyed by fire in 1956. Today, docents staff the replica lighthouse on summer weekends to share the story.

* * *

Neighboring St. Catherine’s Island is today a private playground for a Washington, D.C. Democratic Party club, the Jefferson Islands Club.

St. Clement’s Island remains the area’s public treasure. “Fifth grade children from all over the state come to learn their heritage as Marylanders,” wrote Joseph S. Guy, Jr., a county commissioner in the 1970s who worked to preserve St. Clement’s Island legacy.

Fred Swegles grew up in small-town San Clemente before the freeway. He has covered the town since 1970. Today he covers San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano. He was in the second graduating class at San Clemente High School, after having spent the first two years of high school in double sessions at historic Capistrano Union High School in San Juan. When the new high school opened, he became first sports editor of the school paper, The Triton. He studied journalism and Spanish at USC on scholarship, graduating with honors. Was sports editor of the Daily Trojan. Surfed on the USC surf team. (High school surfing didn't exist back then.) With the Sun Post, he began covering competitive surfing from the mid-1970s, with the birth of the the modern world tour and the origins of high school surf teams. He got into surf photography and into world travel. Has surfed on six continents (not Antarctica). Has visited 11 San Clementes. Has written photo-illustrated profiles on most of them, with more in the works.